He's surely written a column about how owners begin to look like their dogs -- classic Rooney terrain. Spencer technically belongs to Rooney's daughter, Emily, the host of a public TV show in Boston. It's a kind of fresh air fund arrangement.

''Spencer summers with us. He loves getting out of the city,'' Rooney says as the dog settles under a handmade desktop and snoozes.

Early riser: Rooney built the pentagon-shaped writing shed and its accoutrements a decade ago and immediately regretted the design inspiration. ''Never build a five-sided structure,'' he warns, pointing out gaps in the difficult, miter-cut angles. Five triangular skylights that flood the cozy retreat with leaf-dappled sunshine cancel any flaws.

Rooney comes here each morning at 6 o'clock, stealing silently out a side door of the farmhouse so as not to awake Spencer. He works for two hours until pausing for breakfast. After writing and eating, he segues into woodworking for the rest of the morning.

Displayed on a bookshelf in the writing shed is a prized possession, a slightly tarnished brass cup from Albany Academy awarded in 1937. It was Rooney's prize for contributions to the Cue, the Academy's literary magazine.

''I wasn't a good student, but that cup gave me courage to think that I could write,'' says Rooney, who was drafted into the Army after his junior year at Colgate University.

For six decades he's made a living by constructing sentences. His 12 books, mostly collections of columns and a World War II memoir, are routinely bestsellers. He still writes two columns a week, which appear in 147 newspapers across the country, including the Times Union.

He's made his fame and fortune, though, for playing the observant curmudgeon on ''60 Minutes.''

''It bothers me some that my reputation is for doing three-minute pieces,'' he says. He thinks the long-forgotten documentaries and special reports he wrote for Harry Reasoner were some of his best work.

Rooney has no intention of killing the column. You might say he's a bulldog about keeping it alive.

''I'll die, but I won't retire,'' he says. ''If I lost my marbles and knew it, I'd quit writing. I keep looking for signs that I'm losing it, but I feel as vital about writing and the drive to be creative at 82 as I did at 22 or 42 or 62.''

It's not about the money, although he could live nicely on the six-figure column revenue alone. ''I'm compulsive about writing,'' he says. ''I enjoy sitting here. I think I'd write if nobody even read it.''

Not mellowed: Rooney gets a thick package of letters at home each day and 300 to 400 pieces of mail arrive day after day at his CBS office. The volume is steadily overwhelming and mostly goes unopened.

''I'm pretty accurate about assessing my own writing ability,'' Rooney says. ''I'm very average. Hyper-normal, even, which is at the heart of my success.''

A few hours earlier, Rooney put the finishing touches on a column about stem cell research. He boned up on the controversial issue with background information faxed by his daughter, Martha, who works at the U.S. National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md.

Rooney insists he hasn't mellowed with age. His strong opinions continue to touch off a flood of angry mail. But he's learned to let a piece settle and not to shoot from the hip so readily.

''I backed off a little on the stem cell column after fussing with it some more,'' Rooney says. ''It's funny what you can't say anymore. I find I can't be as blunt or rude as I'd like. Especially around my friends up here. Now, if I'm with Mike Wallace in New York, there's nothing I can't say to him.''

A 2-foot-tall stack of printouts of previously published columns rests on a bookshelf. He's planning another collection and will select, categorize and tinker among the 1,000 or so pieces in the pile. ''It gives me plenty to throw away,'' he says. ''I'll rewrite them a little so they'll stand better on their own.''

Rooney has an IBM and a Toshiba laptop in the writing shed and alternates between the two, depending on which one isn't malfunctioning.

A manual Underwood, one of 19 he owns, sits on a bookshelf. He occasionally uses the old machines to type letters.

''I held out for a long time, but I had to face the fact it's much easier to write and revise on a computer than a typewriter,'' Rooney says.

Growing up in Albany: He's been thinking a lot lately about growing up in Albany. His publisher wants a memoir of Rooney's childhood, some of which was covered in ''My War,'' an account of World War II. Rooney was a Stars and Stripes correspondent with exceptional access to the fiercest combat.

Rooney isn't sure he wants to write that book on his early life, although he's happy to free associate with nostalgic memories.

He grew up at 204 Partridge St. in Albany's Pine Hills. He drives through the old neighborhood at least once a year to see the trees he climbed, the houses on his Knickerbocker Press paper route. He can close his eyes and describe the sweet smells from the old Hagaman's Bakery. And taste the bite of the Cliquot Club Ginger Ale he bought as a boy at Evans' grocery store.

When he was 12, Rooney met Marguerite Howard at Miss Munson's dancing class on State Street. They married in 1942. The farmhouse in a Hilltown he prefers not to name (although an open secret) belonged to her parents. The Rooneys have spent summers here for 30 years.

That's about how long Rooney has worked with wood. Just don't suggest it's his therapy.

''I don't need therapy,'' Rooney snaps.

In the wood shop: He calls Spencer from the writing shed into the woodworking shop. It's 90 degrees out. The shed and the shop are the only spots on the property with air-conditioning.

The shop is filled with stools and chairs. ''Whenever I don't know what to do, I make a chair to sit on,'' Rooney says.

He pauses in front of stacks of maple and cherry. Within the pile are some unusually wide pear and apple planks. He's particularly fond of American woods. ''I'll just sit and look at my boards for hours and figure out what I want to make,'' Rooney says.

His wife regularly implores him to stop stockpiling the boards. But the wood compulsion is equally strong as the writing jones.

He's presented as gifts much of his smooth, glossy woodwork to his four children, five grandchildren and friends in the form of chairs, dining room tables, coffee tables, end tables. The farmhouse is filled with his labor of saw and chisel. To the untrained eye, they appear to be the work of a master craftsman. Their creator is more critical.

''I'm not great, but I use wonderful wood and I've got good tools,'' Rooney says. ''No woodworker would accuse me of being a perfectionist.''

Family man: He'll get no argument from his wife, whom he calls Margie. She's back from shopping and is happy to put her husband in his place.

''Do you want to see the real woodworker in the family?'' Margie asks and produces a photo of a classic wooden skiff.

Their son, Brian, an ABC News correspondent, built the boat in his garage in Los Angeles. He had the vessel crated and shipped to Lake George. The boat is powered by a vintage Johnson 10-horsepower outboard motor his dad bought Brian as a boy.

The kids -- the fourth child, Ellen, is a photographer based in London -- and grandkids converge on Lake George each summer. They still make their coffee with lake water, as always.

Rooney doesn't mind crowing about his cooking, particularly oatmeal cookies he claims are eaten as quickly as he bakes them.

For lunch, Rooney slices into a loaf of rustic white bread he made the day before and executes a perfect BLT sandwich. You've got to like an 82-year-old guy who's not stingy with the bacon or mayonnaise.

Rooney disappears for a while in a back room. He returns, muttering, with a bottle of Coca-Cola. ''I hate those plastic rings they put the bottles in,'' he says, and you imagine you're in a ''60 Minutes'' bit come to life.

Poster boy: Whether he's writing, woodworking, cooking or pursuing other hobbies, Rooney could be a poster boy for Modern Maturity.

His idea of a senior moment is playing tennis on the court he had constructed deep in a grove of pines on the seven-acre property. He built a tall umpire's chair out of oak, which has weathered well for more than a decade.

A die-hard New York Giants fan, he looks forward to attending training camp at the University at Albany.

He might drive his sports car, a 1966 Sunbeam Tiger convertible. It's a green beauty with black leather interior and the top down. About 4,000 were made in England with V8 Ford engines. ''It's the most overpowered car ever built,'' Rooney says, grinning.

He tries to keep the speedometer lower than his age. It's not easy. He's had the Tiger up to 125 and got a ticket on Interstate 88 doing 90.